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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768913">Criminal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenAng/pseuds/QueenAng'>QueenAng</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Other, Secret Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:02:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenAng/pseuds/QueenAng</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wheeljack knew, logically, there was no conceivable way to hide a relationship forever. Still, he had never stopped to actually brace for the fallout.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Starscream/Wheeljack (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>101</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Criminal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wheeljack knew, logically, there was no conceivable way to hide a relationship forever. They lived on a planet inhabited by robotic organisms, all capable of taking image captured of anything that crossed their visual field, in addition to security cameras lodged in every corner of this paranoid new world. He knew his chances diminished even further considering he was dating the Emperor Perpetua. The fact that Emperor happened to be Starscream dashed those chances into miniscule odds.</p>
<p>Still, Wheeljack had never stopped to actually brace for the fallout. He assumed when the scandal came to light, it would do so in a big way – their faces splashed on the holo-screens, their designations inscribed in every headline. Starscream had attracted attention long enough to know how to deal with it. He had collected a ragtag PR team headed by himself to sell his own publicity. Wheeljack figured he would never have to worry about it besides fending off reporters from his lab, and even then, he assumed Starscream would just put measures in place to keep them out.</p>
<p>It never occurred to him – though in hindsight, it probably should have – that even big news had to break small first.</p>
<p>Wheeljack haunted his lab into the late orns of the cycle. Starscream was out wooing politicians with fancy high grade and expensive energon platters, so there was no point in going home to an empty – <em>boring</em> – hab-suite. Instead, he fiddled with experiments that had been shelved in favor of the more important task of rebuilding Iacon. Nothing explosive – Starscream had made it clear that he wouldn’t be paying to refurbish the lab if Wheeljack blew anything <em>else</em> up. That, and Wheeljack was certain Starscream had selected the most uncomfortable couch to place in their hab-suite. His struts still ached, and it wasn’t from the little explosion that had knocked him into the wall.</p>
<p>The door slid open with a quiet hiss of hydraulics. Wheeljack – servos deep in… well, something, he had forgotten exactly what, that was the <em>problem</em> – didn’t bother to turn around. All the other workers had long since gone home. Only Starscream stuck around this late.</p>
<p>But the heavy pede-steps were not characteristic of his light-footed Seeker, and when the smell of high-grade hit him, it was not of the pricey Vosnian engex that Starscream favored.</p>
<p>Wheeljack did look then, just as Ironhide swayed to one side and grasped the edge of a table. “Fun night?” Wheeljack guessed.</p>
<p>“Can’t believe it,” Ironhide muttered, more to himself than Wheeljack. “Can’t fraggin’ believe it.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack set down his current tool. “You good, ‘Hide?”</p>
<p>A heavy huff escaped Ironhide’s vents. “So’s it true, then?” Ironhide asked. Before Wheeljack could question what he meant, he continued, “Been watching you and him. Ya never even go to your own hab anymore. Haven’t gone out with us in – frag, <em>decacycles</em>. Now he’s gone and you’re here like a lost turbo-fox.” A servo rubbed across Ironhide’s faceplates.</p>
<p>Wheeljack’s spark spun rapidly in his chassis. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been <em>busy</em>, ‘Hide. Iacon won’t rebuild itself.”</p>
<p>“He tell you to say that?” Ironhide asked. “He tell you what lies you ought to say to keep us off your back?”</p>
<p>Wheeljack’s defense mechanism had always been to feign ignorance. Explosion? What explosion? “Who?”</p>
<p>“Don’t play that game with me,” Ironhide said, pointing an accusatory digit. “I’ve known you for four million years. I’ve covered for you just as many times. Don’t try to fool me too.”</p>
<p>“Not trying to fool you,” Wheeljack said, placating. “I really don’t know what you mean.”</p>
<p>“<em>Starscream</em>,” the old bot said, his tone rough with audible derision. “Fraggin’ <em>Starscream</em> is who I mean.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack felt as though his processors had frozen. Few things made Ironhide really lose his temper – Optimus getting hurt, the Terror Twins tossing themselves needlessly into firefights, Prowl existing – and generally such encounters ended with meeting Ironhide’s fists.</p>
<p>“Ya know,” Ironhide said, and Wheeljack had heard it enough times that he sensed the beginning of a tirade, in a tone usually reserved for the Twins when they made particularly egregious mistakes that even Ironhide wouldn’t joke around about. “I get that the war’s over. War’s been over. Whatever. I know it ain’t about red or purple badges anymore. But there’s some things – some mechs – you just can’t look past, no matter what the circumstance is. Starscream is the <em>embodiment</em> of that.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack wanted to speak – some cutting remark came to mind, thought up by his reeling processor, and Wheeljack <em>heard</em> it in Starscream’s voice – but he smartly kept his vocalizer off. If it came down to it, Ironhide could yell far louder than he could.</p>
<p>“You should know better,” Ironhide said, and his voice became more severe. “You were supposed to be one of the smart ones.”</p>
<p>“Look, I don’t—”</p>
<p>“Shut up.” Ironhide’s volume did raise then, to speak over the growling of his engine. “I’m talking, you’re listening. I don’t want to hear whatever slag he’s told you to say to anybody.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack was good at talking even when mechs told him to shut up – to which Ratchet could attest endlessly – but the sheer acrimony in Ironhide’s tone made him freeze.</p>
<p>“You might not have been on the front lines, but you were close to Optimus Prime. You were part of the inner circle. You knew all the things we never let get out to the rest of the troops. All the weapons the ‘Cons tried to build. All the agents Jazz lost getting that information. All the taunts that <em>he</em> sent us.”</p>
<p>“The war is—” Wheeljack began.</p>
<p>“It might be over!” Ironhide agreed. “But that doesn’t erase the things that happened. To us.” He took a lurching step forward, off-balance and heavy-footed. “You may not have seen what he did to our troops on the battlefield, but I did. The rest of us had to. Maybe it would do you good to have a little reminder about the things he did to your friends.”</p>
<p>“I know what he did!” Wheeljack said. “I read Jazz’s reports, I helped Ratch in the med-bay. I didn’t spend the last four million years in a lab bunker, ‘Hide.”</p>
<p>“Then you know.” Ironhide’s optics cycled narrower. “That’s worse, Jack. You know what he did, and you don’t give a damn. You don’t give a damn about any of the bots he shot down over the past four million years.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t say that,” Wheeljack said.</p>
<p>“You didn’t have to,” Ironhide retorted. “It’s what you meant. It’s what you’re doing. You called those bots your friends and now you’re fragging the bot who killed them.”</p>
<p>“We all killed,” Wheeljack noted coolly. “You think the bombs I built just left a few scratches and twisted wires? You killed plenty of ‘Cons too.”</p>
<p>Ironhide’s voice was low. “They were ‘Cons.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack’s spinal struts went tense. “So that’s what this is about! It is about badges!”</p>
<p>“It’s about what he did,” Ironhide said. “It’s about Silverflame, and Gunner, and Blackhawk, and all the other bots who never made it back to the Ark because of him. Bots who you knew, who you called your friends. Bots who were stupid enough to call you their friend. Some loyalty you showed them.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack’s tank twisted. “It’s not like I was fragging him during the war,” Wheeljack started.</p>
<p>“Because he was too busy fragging Megatron to notice you existed,” Ironhide replied. He gave a hoarse, scathing laugh. “Ya prob’ly wouldn’t have been able to feel anything anyway. Ya didn’t have to pay attention to Jazz’s reports to know he fragged his way up to second-in-command with—”</p>
<p>“—with talent and grace, as I do all things.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the only voice that could reach above Ironhide’s growling engine was one backed by a hissing jet engine. Starscream’s heeled thrusters on the cold metal floor of the lab sent out a distinctive echo. Ironhide turned his helm slowly, his balance wavering as he moved to face the jet.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave,<em> ‘Hide</em>,” Starscream said. His servos were crossed in front of his narrow golden cockpit, hips swaying with each step. “Visiting hours ended ages ago. If your chronometer is broken, I can have Flatline look at it for you.”</p>
<p>The gesture seemed innocent. Far too innocent for Starscream to truthfully be offering it. “Star,” Wheeljack said, only a tad warningly.</p>
<p>Ironhide faced him fully. “You may have pulled the veil over everyone else’s optics,” Ironhide said slowly, “but don’t think for a moment I buy any of it.”</p>
<p>“I’m not selling it,” Starscream said. “Think whatever you want. But think it in your own hab, not here.”</p>
<p>Ironhide looked back to Wheeljack, his gaze hard.</p>
<p>“It’s late,” Wheeljack said noncommittally. “Let’s talk to tomorrow, Ironhide.”</p>
<p>The red bot’s optics slipped back to Starscream, who offered a dentae-filled ersatz smile. “Let’s not,” he snapped, and plodded past Starscream, close enough that Starscream had to lift a wing up to let him past. The jet flicked said wing in response, like shaking off a cyberbug.</p>
<p>“Dramatic,” was all Starscream offered, after the door had slid shut. Even the soft sound of the locks sliding back into place managed to sound aggressive in the wake of Ironhide’s crackling energy field.</p>
<p>“Star.”</p>
<p>Starscream looked at him, dropping his servos to his hips. He glanced to the side of the lab, where Wheeljack had erected shelves to hold his various projects, some new and some carried over from the war. His steps closer to Wheeljack were slow, calculated. Nevertheless, Wheeljack felt his plating – which had reflexively clamped close to his protoform when Ironhide began to close the distance between them – loosen again.</p>
<p>“You know,” Starscream began, his tone inching, “during the war, I—”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to explain anything,” Wheeljack said quickly. One of Starscream’s optical ridges raised, and Wheeljack continued, “I know. Or, I don’t want to know. It’s done, and I want it to be done.”</p>
<p>Starscream’s helm tilted. “All right,” he agreed. “It’s done.”</p>
<p>Wheeljack stepped closer to him, Starscream’s wings moving from his side to his back to allow him to come to stand at his shoulder. “No more talking about the war,” Wheeljack said.</p>
<p>Another wing flick, this time a smaller gesture. “You won’t hear any objection from me,” Starscream said.</p>
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